Oxford English Dictionary

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester. Oxford University Press. 260 pages. $25. The British Empire, which once comprised a quarter of the globe, has dwindled to little more than its original island kingdom, but English is everywhere. When the American Empire follows in due course, English, like Latin, looks to outlive mere political power as a world language. The richness of this extraordinary tongue and its history lie in the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the greatest scholarly endeavors in history.

Yesterday's post on a maladroit paragraph in Slate   that used mantle  for mantel , and which would have been a shoddy piece of work even if it had been written the other way around, prompted a reader named Chris Harris to take me to task on Facebook: You are being unusually prescriptivist on this. And for what it's worth, I'd stack my credentials against yours in knowing how and when to cite the OED. Get off your snobby horse, John. Fight a real battle.

In the beginning, of course, was the word. Since then, thanks to words - sounds, their written forms and precise, specific meanings - a lot has been accomplished by humankind that isn't done routinely by gerbils and rhinoceroses. If the hypothetical challenge were to decide what one book to save from a global, wipe-out-everything fire, the Oxford English Dictionary, known to its pals as the OED, would be neck-in-neck with the Bible. Famously, W.H. Auden often took one of the OED's 20 volumes to bed with him, to browse and then to drift into the arms of Morpheus.

'When  I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.' Yesterday I posted a dispatch on the bogus "over/more than" distinction beloved of journalists, with the expectation that its adherents would prove obstinately resistant to evidence and argument. Almost immediately a number of people delivered themselves into my hands. Here is a ripe specimen posted on Facebook by Raymond Billy of Resonate News: NO ONE cares about split infinitives ;)

The Oxford English Dictionary is the biggest unfinished book in the world. It is also probably the only major reference work brought into being with the significant help of a raving lunatic.An American lunatic, at that.The first edition of the OED, published in 1928, defined 414,825 English words. The second edition, in 1989, defined more than half a million. Since then, about 15,000 additional words -- some new, some overlooked -- have been tallied. The third edition, scheduled for 2005, will include all these plus whatever other words are discovered or invented in the meantime.

Each week, The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar -- another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. Use it in a sentence in a comment on his blog, You Don't Say, and the best sentence will be featured next week. This week's word: quidnunc Coined in the 18th century by combining the Latin quid, "what," and nunc, "now," quidnunc indicates a person who is perpetually asking "What now?" That is, a quidnunc is an inquisitive person, a gossip, a busybody, a rumor-monger.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: FASCICLE When books are produced by sewing individual sections into the binding, each section is called a fascicle (pronounced FAS-i-kel). It is most particularly used to indicate an installment of a book published separately. The word comes from the Latin fasciculus , a diminutive of fascis , "bundle.

Some months ago, one Clark Elder Morrow published a screed in The Vocabula Review attacking the Oxford English Dictionary for admitting into its sacred precincts vile things that are "not even words. " Ill-informed and dogmatic prescriptivism is one of the heaviest crosses those of us who aspire to be reasonable and moderate prescriptivists must bear. I responded to Mr. Morrow's post in a post of my own, "I fear that the gentleman is a coxcomb. "  I discover, sadly, that my worst fears have been realized.

Editing an article for Wednesday's editions of The Sun , I let through a reference to an automobile that "collided witha guardrail," then paused and doubled back to the Associated Press Stylebook . Like an insect preserved in amber, the entry was still there: "Two objects must be in motion before they can collide . A moving train cannot collide  with a stopped train. " I suspect that this is a fetish peculiar to newspapers. It was an article of faith in Theodore Bernstein's The Careful Writer , and John Bremner, insisting on the Latin etymology ( col  plus ladere , "to strike together")

As it approaches the record for longest-running comedy on television (only Ozzie and Harriet Nelson lasted longer), The Simpsons, Fox's animated theater of the absurd, marks its 300th episode tonight. Here are a few signposts along the show's invasion of popular culture: 1988: Cartoonist Matt Groening's characters are unveiled in a series of vignettes on Fox's The Tracey Ullman Show. The Simpsons makes its debut the next year, climbing into the top 15 in weekly ratings. 1990: Newspapers begin convening therapists to ask them whether Homer and Marge Simpson are good parents.

Each week The Sun's  John McIntyre  presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar - another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: EMBONPOINT Some of us, well, many of us, are growing portly or corpulent. All right, fat. But if we wish to dignify our stoutness, no word would be better than embonpoint (pronounced ahn-bohn-pwan). From the French en bon point , "in good condition, it indicates plumpness, sometimes particularly the female bosom.

Editing an article for Wednesday's editions of The Sun , I let through a reference to an automobile that "collided witha guardrail," then paused and doubled back to the Associated Press Stylebook . Like an insect preserved in amber, the entry was still there: "Two objects must be in motion before they can collide . A moving train cannot collide  with a stopped train. " I suspect that this is a fetish peculiar to newspapers. It was an article of faith in Theodore Bernstein's The Careful Writer , and John Bremner, insisting on the Latin etymology ( col  plus ladere , "to strike together")

Let the record show that, for my part, I prefer to use literally in its literal sense. I would never says that its misuse would make my head literally explode. The second reason for not saying that is that literally , as HeadsUp: The Blog points out in a post , has multiple meanings, including, well, "figuratively" or "for all intents and purposes. " You can find that in the Oxford English Dictionary and in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage and in the works of respectable writers over a long span.

I was not around for the conception of the Dictionary of American Regional English and was only generally aware of its long gestation. And though I was not present for the accouchement, I did get to attend the christening yesterday. The National Endowment for the Humanities threw a reception at the Old Post Office Building in Washington* for the publication of the fifth and concluding volume of the dictionary.** Joan Houston Hall, the chief editor, and Ben Zimmer, the linguist, spoke about the heroic accomplishment, and family members of the late Frederic Cassidy, the original editor, were present to share in the triumph.

The other day I cooed here in Wordville over the publication of the final volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English , and yesterday Mary Beth Marklein quoted those sentiments in an article published in USA Today . I stand by those statements. DARE is a project underwritten by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the oldest project of the endowment, representing half a century of work. The next time you hear someone railing against government expenditure, keep in mind that your tax dollars could, and do, go for worse things than preserving the marks of our distinctive national voice.

The day of my first piano lesson, I picked out "Yankee Doodle," right hand only. It would be insane to start a  beginner with one of Bach's partitas or one of Lizst's Hungarian rhapsodies. One starts simply and progresses by stages as far as one's inclination, abilities, application, and instruction go. Yet in teaching writing and editing to undergraduates, I find many who have not managed to advance very far beyond the "Yankee Doodle" stage. I fault two things: misguided instruction and the prevalence of fussbudgetry.

Each week The Sun's  John McIntyre  presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar - another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: EMBONPOINT Some of us, well, many of us, are growing portly or corpulent. All right, fat. But if we wish to dignify our stoutness, no word would be better than embonpoint (pronounced ahn-bohn-pwan). From the French en bon point , "in good condition, it indicates plumpness, sometimes particularly the female bosom.

Each week, The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: EGREGIOUS Language very frequently goes topsy-turvy. In English, we have a number of words that bear opposite meanings, such as cleave , which sometimes means "to stick to" and sometimes "to split apart. " If you look at a dictionary that operates on historical principles, like the Oxford English Dictionary, you'll find that the first definition, the earliest one, for egregious (ee-GREE-jus)

Some months ago, one Clark Elder Morrow published a screed in The Vocabula Review attacking the Oxford English Dictionary for admitting into its sacred precincts vile things that are "not even words. " Ill-informed and dogmatic prescriptivism is one of the heaviest crosses those of us who aspire to be reasonable and moderate prescriptivists must bear. I responded to Mr. Morrow's post in a post of my own, "I fear that the gentleman is a coxcomb. "  I discover, sadly, that my worst fears have been realized.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: FASCICLE When books are produced by sewing individual sections into the binding, each section is called a fascicle (pronounced FAS-i-kel). It is most particularly used to indicate an installment of a book published separately. The word comes from the Latin fasciculus , a diminutive of fascis , "bundle.